The mylar party balloon carries a 30m and 20m 20mW transmitter on board. Whilst 20m is getting spots down under, the 30m spots are coming in from as far afield as the eastern US.
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| ...and also responsible for endless interference with weak signal modes. |
Trying to listen for that little balloon on 30m this morning, I found myself, yet again, listening to a WSPR spot frequency totally obliterated by RTTY.
The QRM is distressing and unnecessary enough. But what seems even more annoying is the inability of operators to do simple maths - or to realise that maths is needed at all. Ops simply aren't allowing for the fact their signal extends 3kHz (at least!) down from the dial frequency, and run into other transmissions as a result.
Not that this is problem limited to RTTY. Every day, I listen to people who operate at the numerical frequency limit for the band in use, which puts their USB transmissions purely and simply out of band. This means they are operating illegally. Once again, the bandwidth and mode of the signal simply isn't being considered by the supposedly qualified operators.
And if you thought operators with decades of experience are immune - they're not! On 60m the other day, I heard a long 'net' take place, with very old callsigns busy pontificating away, yet not one of them realised they were well out of band.
I've written a lot about interference with WSPR recently, and I'll only reinforce previous posts by saying something really needs to be done. Beyond a few initial emails with committee bums on seats at the RSGB, they've gone entirely quiet on the issue. It's hardly surprising there's a considerable cabal of people out there who wonder what the RSGB is doing.
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